You are in:
- EDITORIAL CONTENT » News » News
Airwave explain the benefits of the new NPIA Acceleration Package
Roger Marsden, Client Director - Mobile Data at Airwave, (and an inaugural member of BAPCO since inception) explains some of the key features of the recently awarded NPIA / Airwave Acceleration Package and discusses how UK police forces can benefit from the Package under the current government push for mobile information.
As part of the NPIA’s ongoing commitment to meet the recommendations in Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s report, mobile information roll-outs are being fast-tracked across UK police forces. Following the £40 million already made available to selected police forces, the NPIA has now awarded Airwave Solutions Ltd a contract extension to offer a comprehensive mobile information ‘Acceleration Package’ as part of the Home Office-backed mobile information programme.
This extension to the existing Airwave services contract will mean that all police forces in the UK will now be able to purchase complete ‘end to end’ mobile information solutions from Airwave under the terms of their existing 15 year contracts.
Not only will this significantly reduce the cost and time of choosing and procuring mobile information solutions, but it will also offer to forces the widest possible choice of ‘packaged’ components (including devices, network bearers, applications, platform and managed services) with the reassurance that detailed pricing, specifications, service levels and delivery timescales have all been negotiated with Airwave by the NPIA on their behalf. In order to assist forces in moving quickly towards deployment, the Airwave Acceleration Package offers significant discounts from standard pricing and these discounts will be held until March 2009.
But this national initiative is not just about technology. One of Sir Ronnie’s key recommendations was that forces should move towards adopting ‘common infrastructure and standards’ for information sharing, and the Airwave Acceleration Package has been designed specifically to support forces in doing this.
At the heart of Airwave mobile information solutions is the Airwave Mobile Applications Gateway (MAG). This national, carrier-grade platform is hosted securely within the existing Airwave security domain and is designed to support the mobile information requirements of all projected UK police users for the foreseeable future.
Because of its uniquely strategic nature, the Airwave MAG service offers chief constables the ability to rapidly deploy mobile information solutions that deliver immediate local operational and business benefits now. But they can do this safe in the knowledge that more strategic mobile information sharing with regional or national partner forces can be delivered in a highly flexible manner as and when necessary. Should forces choose to adopt this common infrastructure approach now, then future national or regional joint working initiatives will become much easier and more cost effective to implement.
This NPIA initiative also offers a major strategic opportunity for information sharing between all emergency services. Because Airwave are already in the process of implementing national strategic mobile information solutions for the Fire and Ambulance Services, then as and when joint service mobile information sharing becomes a reality, then the adoption of common mobile data infrastructures and systems now will only serve to ease that development and reduce risk.
Customer choice and flexibility were clearly key requirements in the NPIA selection process for the Acceleration Package award. Because the Airwave MAG service is ‘bearer agnostic’, the Airwave Acceleration Package allows forces to choose from a variety of networks such as TETRA, GPRS and 3G thus allowing them to select the network most suited to their specific operational requirements. This total freedom of choice is also reflected in the variety of portable data devices available under the Acceleration Package – this ranges from ‘consumer’ style GPRS and 3G PDA’s through to TETRA PDA’s and vehicle demountable robust TETRA ‘tablet’ PC’s – thus allowing forces to select the most appropriate data devices for specific types of operational users. The solution can also be run on existing or future force in-vehicle Mobile Data Terminals running Windows XP operating systems.
The Acceleration Package also allows force managers to retain total control of their MAG service by providing a local in-force administration terminal connected directly to the national MAG platform. This offers the best of both worlds - local flexibility and total control whilst benefiting from the strategic benefits of a national system.
Over recent years, there has been continuing pressure from elected representatives and other senior stakeholders for police forces to fully exploit the true potential of the Airwave service – especially the additional operational and business benefits possible with mobile information. This NPIA ‘acceleration’ development now offers forces a golden opportunity to address this area and to fully exploit and maximise the original government investment in the Airwave service.
Moving a police force into the new world of mobile information can be an extremely challenging and stressful business. It is therefore vital that police forces can trust their mobile information suppliers to really understand and respond to their unique needs. Airwave has been working intimately with all police forces throughout the UK since the start of the Airwave service in 2000 and has developed a deep understanding of the unique demands of delivering the world’s largest critical information and communications systems for police users over TETRA. This understanding has been incorporated from ground up into the development and design of Airwave mobile information solutions.
As a result, the Airwave Acceleration Package offers a comprehensive range of mobile information software applications designed to deliver proven operational and business benefits quickly. These applications have been designed with significant input and assistance from front line police officers and supervisors – thereby ensuring that they meet true operational police needs whilst still offering effective business improvement opportunities at a force strategic level.
In addition, the technical architecture and design of the end to end solution involved lengthy consultation and detailed involvement with highly experienced and senior police technical stakeholders.
The key police ‘front line’ applications contained within the Airwave Acceleration Package are:-
- Airwave Mobile Email and Personal Organiser – manage emails, calendar and contacts lists away from the station
- Airwave Mobile Validate – PNC/SCRO access plus automated checks against the National Voters Register and Postal Address File
- Airwave Mobile Stop and Search – including mobile printing of forms and tickets
- Airwave Mobile Criminal Intelligence – search local intelligence databases and input ‘5x5’ intelligence reports from the field
- Airwave Mobile Command & Control – including dispatching, viewing and updating incident logs
- Airwave Mobile Driver Validation Service - (DVS) – mobile access to new DVLA drivers details and colour images
- Airwave Mobile Crime Management – investigate and record crimes at the scene and reduce delays and ‘re-keying’ of information in the back office
- Airwave Mobile Self Learning Tools – covering Police National Legal Database (PNLD) and Police Visual Handbook - PVH
The Acceleration Package also provides a unique opportunity for police forces to embrace the business benefits offered by electronic PDA police notebooks and offline ‘forms’. In an exclusive agreement, leading developers of this PDA technology - Kelvin Connect -have chosen to partner solely with Airwave to offer their solution through the NPIA Acceleration Package selection process. This offers Airwave customers the widest choice of ‘offline forms’ to support all police processes (e.g. statements, standard prosecution reports, crime, road traffic collision, road traffic fixed penalty notices, HORT1, VDRS and anti-social behaviour fixed penalty notices.)
Whilst the Airwave Acceleration Package offers forces total flexibility in their choice of network bearers, the existing Airwave TETRA network offers very significant benefits when considering the unique challenges associated with mobile information for police users.
As police forces will be using mission critical mobile information, it is of paramount importance that the solution be secure and resilient. Airwave’s network is based on TETRA, which is arguably best suited to serving the communications needs of the ‘blue light’ services. It is a dedicated emergency services network which cannot be saturated with general public ‘overload’ at times of unusual activity (e.g. New Year’s Eve text message delays) or in case of critical emergencies such as the 7/7 London bombings.
Another key advantage of the Airwave service is its 99.86% national geographical coverage, especially critical for forces with large rural areas where commercial network coverage may be at best patchy or at worst totally unavailable.
Whilst the ongoing debate about speed and capacity of competing mobile data networks will undoubtedly continue, Airwave has addressed this issue robustly by designing their mobile information solutions to work very effectively over the Airwave TETRA network. Using a combination of efficient application design, together with embedded optimisation and compression technology, Airwave are delivering to Lancashire Constabulary real world police applications such as colour images of suspects; missing persons descriptions; PNC and SCRO checks; crime tasking and briefing and full email / contacts / calendars - all at speeds equalling or even bettering identical applications running in parallel over commercial GPRS networks.
The development of mobile information services by ‘UK Police PLC’ has lagged markedly behind their private sector counterparts as well as some of their international police colleagues. Whilst introducing mobile information into the complex and dangerous world of front line policing demands careful planning and informed research, the unique nature of policing cannot be held up as the sole reason for the patchy and fragmented progress to date. Other more mundane reasons - such as an inability to agree on standard national police user requirements and priority applications; unique police culture of in-force IT and communications teams to pursue widely differing ‘DIY’ solutions; immature product offerings from the supplier community; plus never ending round of local ‘pilots’ and ‘proof of concepts’ – have all served to severely handicap any real co-ordinated progress toward national police strategic solutions.
However, Government, Home Office, ACPO and NPIA have now moved decisively to offer incentivisation, leadership and co-ordination to the UK Police Service in order to accelerate a strategic but co-ordinated move towards effective mobile information.
The Airwave Acceleration Package now awarded by NPIA is designed to underpin this ground-breaking development and Airwave Mobile Information Solutions are now ready to support the UK Police Service as it moves into this exciting new era of secure and resilient mobile information sharing. Airwave are also determined to help revolutionise life for front line police officers by reducing paperwork and bureaucracy; speeding up and improving the quality of critical ‘on the spot’ decisions; increasing officer safety; combating crime; reducing unnecessary voice radio messages; maximising front-line patrol time and thereby improving public perceptions of the police.
